Resume Basics
No one agrees on resumes – every employer will want or like something different!
AND most resumes:
- Are read in 6 seconds (on average) by recruiters & hiring managers
- Are read on mobile devices
- Should have no sentences or paragraphs (if it looks like a book, busy professionals won’t read it)
- Are going through Application Tracking Systems
- ATS: software application that allows electronic handling of recruitment
- Filter applications/resumes based on keywords, skills, former employers, years of experience and schools attended
- ATS screen out 75%+ of resumes
Resume Recommendations:
(any of these can be pre-empted by employer instruction or insider information)
- .doc file is the standard (not .docx, pdf, rtf or jpg)
- Sans serif fonts only (Arial, Calibri, Tahoma, Verdana)
- Name: 14’ to 18’ point fonts
- Body: 10’ to 12’ point fonts
- Bold: Name, Industry/Job Title Objective, Section Heads, Degrees/Certificates, Job Titles
- No templates, lines, borders, logos, color, images, columns, tables, text boxes, graphs or shading
- No condensed or expanded text formatting
- No headers or footers
- No abbreviations or acronyms (unless seen listed in job announcement)
- Never left justify entire resume – use tabs to lead reader’s eye
- Keep it simple with edited text, no errors and lots of white space
- Use proper grammar, spelling, capitalization & punctuation
- Contact information on separate lines:
- Name
- Address? (only if adds value)
- City, State Zip? (only if adds value)
- Phone #
- Email (preferably YourName@gmail.com)
- LinkedIn url
- No objective section head
- Create industry focused skills-based resume (this also basis of LinkedIn profile)
- Everything on resume is related or relevant or transferable to the industry
- Given to your network, staffing services, career fairs
- Put industry in bold under contact info (could have several industry resumes)
- Profile/Summary/Highlights of Qualifications section
- 3-5 bullets featuring your best sales points for the industry
- Added up experience
- Relevant education
- Relevant accomplishments
- Skills, Abilities, Technical, Professional keyword section
- Tab out for easy read
- Education (goes at bottom/ if not recent & relevant; goes under Skills at top is more recent & relevant to experience)
- Chronological reverse order
- Bold Certificate or Degree
- Un-bold Institution
- Tab over for City, State (no employer address, zip, phone #, names)
- Year graduated or left school
- Simple bullets of added value
- High GPA (3.25 grade point average or above)
- Dean’ List, Cum Laude, Honor Society, etc.
- Student Government proves leadership
- Related or Relevant Clubs or Activities
- Experience section head
- Chronological reverse order
- If related & relevant volunteer experience
- Insert in experience section for for-profit employer
- Create Volunteer section for not-for-profit employer
- Bold Job Titles
- Un-bold Company name
- Tab over for City, State (no employer address, zip, phone #, names)
- Month & Year to Month & Year (no day needed – 01/13 to 10/15)
- Create simple bullets
- Action word (correct grammar – present or past tense)
- Think accomplishments (not just job duties)
- Quantify/measure/monetize/stats & numbers when possible
- Approximates/ranges/based in reality – no company confidential info
- Numbers jump out of text in 6 second read
- Numbers are unique to you
- Numbers help prove transferable results & value
- Create a customized exact job focused skills-based resume for every opportunity
- Everything still applies
- Customize the following:
- Change Industry title to exact Job Title
- Change Profile/Summary/Highlights to reflect job description requirements/preferences + insider info that you have in their terminology and with your strongest sales points for that position
- Change Skills section
- Get rid of skills not on job description or told by insider
- Make sure skill sets are exact word matches
- Re-language bullets to better align with company descriptions